Amazon officials said today the company plans to drastically add to its Southeast Tennessee workforce with the hiring of about 1,000 new employees.
Hundreds of job-seekers turned out this morning at the Amazon distribution center in Chattanooga as part of what the Internet retailer termed the nation's largest job fair. The company also was hiring for its Charleston, Tenn., location.
The company planned to make thousands of on-the-spot job offers, saying it has more than 50,000 jobs available at job fairs at about a dozen of its fulfillment centers nationally.
"It's based on customer demand," said Amazon spokeswoman Ali Hutchins in Chattanooga.
In Chattanooga and Charleston, Amazon has close to 4,000 full- and part-time employees already, according to the company.
The offered jobs on the spot will be to pack or sort boxes and help ship them to customers. Nearly 40,000 of the 50,000 jobs will be full time, according to Amazon. Most of these jobs will count toward Amazon's previously announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year.